West African Traders as Translators Between Chinese and African Urban Modernities
Asian Studies
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Final Report Abstract
Our research has first highlighted the interactions and relationships between Chinese and African entrepreneurs in markets such as Makola in Accra and the Centenaire in Dakar. Although our preliminary findings initially revealed very few interactions between these groups of actors, we noticed a certain dynamic in terms of strategies of adaptation by the local population to the Chinese presence in these places. Impacts of the Chinese presence and the activities of Chinese entrepreneurial migrants were most directly visible within Chinese-African labor relations and with regardto the potential for structural changes of the economic and social positioning of marginalized groups (young rural migrants, female headporters). Imports of Chinese merchandise enabled the emergence of a new middle class and transformed the lifestyles and consumption patterns of local people. On the basis of these findings, we decided to follow a number of African entrepreneurs in China, more specifically in Yiwu and in Guangzhou. We tried to categorise them by recognising the various strategies of different types of traders and by detecting the networks that were developing along their business trajectories. Consequently, this sparked our interest in the impact of their experiences in China upon their return to Senegal or Ghana – both in their daily lives and in their business management practices. At the same time, because of the African presence in China, we were able to witness strategies deployed by marginalised social groups (such as internal rural-to-urban migrants, ethnic Uyghurs or Hui), especially with reference to their social mobility within the local Chinese society of places, in which large concentrations of African (and middle Eastern) traders were present. However, the degree to which transnational migrants in the framework of globalization from below are able to impact their host societies is largely dependent on the political will and the executive capacities of the host state. As we have noted since the beginning of our investigations on the topic – in China as much as in African countries such as Ghana and Senegal – relations between Chinese and Africans over time have changed their perceptions of each other and, most importantly, have generated shifts in terms of attitude and behaviour, whether in everyday life, in business or with regard to working relationships. The entrepreneurs that were the subject of this research personify “globalisation from below” in their transnational economic practices. They are subjects and actors of transformation, in both African and Chinese societies, in areas as diverse as norms and practices, strategies for access to economic and social resources, habits of consumption, social mobility (whether individual or collective), and ways of living. The mobility of our interlocutors – traders and entrepreneurs as well as businesspeople – is no longer solely considered from the viewpoint of integration into a different society. For African entrepreneurs, China remains one destination among many within their spatial strategies of economic expansion. African businesspeople take into account economic conditions at various localities from an international perspective that also includes Europe, the US, the Arab world, Southeast Asia, and their home countries. However, China in particular has come to act as a demystifying source of idea about the West and the position of Africa in relation to it. While China has by far not allowed all transnational entrepreneurs to realize their business dreams, it has been of immense emancipatory potential to a new class of professional, global business people.
Publications
- (2013), Petits commerçants chinois en Afrique et saturation des marchés ouest-africains : déconstruction d’une rumeur (Dakar-Accra) , in: Sociétés Migration, 149, 25, 137-158
Marfaing, Laurence / Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3917/migra.149.0137) - (2013), Same-Same But Different: Chinese Traders' Perspectives on African Labor, in: China Journal, 69, 134-153
Giese, Karsten
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1086/668841) - (2013), The Impact of Chinese Business on Market Entry in Ghana and Senegal, in: Africa. Journal of the International African Institute, 83, 4, 646-669
Thiel, Alena / Marfaing, Laurence
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972013000491) - (2014), Quelles mobilités pour quelles ressources?, in: Canadian Journal of African Studies, 48, 1, 41-57
Marfaing, Laurence
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2014.974902) - (2014), The Vulnerable Other – Distorted Equity in Chinese- Ghanaian Employment Relations, in: Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37, 6, 1101-1120
Giese, Karsten / Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2012.681676) - (2015), Chinese factor in the space, place and agency of female head porters in urban Ghana, in: Social & Cultural Geography, 16, 4, 444-464
Giese, Karsten / Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2014.998266) - (2015), Demystifying Chinese Business Strength in Urban Senegal and Ghana: Structural Change and the Performativity of Rumours, in: Canadian Journal of African Studies, 48, 3, 405-423
Marfaing, Laurence / Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2014.935642) - (2015), Importations de marchandises chinoises et mobilité sousrégionale en Afrique de l'ouest, in: Cahiers D'etudes Africaines, LV (2), 218, 359-379
Marfaing, Laurence
(See online at https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesafricaines.18136) - (2015), Networks, spheres of influence and the mediation of opportunity: the case of West African trade agents in China, in: Journal of Panafrican Studies, 7, 10, 65-84
Marfaing, Laurence / Thiel, Alena
- (2015), The psychological contract in Chinese-African informal labor relations, in: International Journal of Human Resource Management, 26, 14, 1807-1826
Giese, Karsten / Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2014.971844) - (2016), Market men and station women: changing significations of gendered space in Accra, Ghana, in: Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 34, 4, 459-478
Stasik, Michael / Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2017.1281385) - (2017), Entangled temporalities: Ghana's national biometric identity registration project, in: Anthropology Today, 33, 1, 3-5
Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12321) - (2018), Orders of trade: regulating Accra’s Makola market, in: The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 49, 1, 34-53
Beek, Jan / Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2017.1289358) - (2018), “Clean, safe and orderly”: Migrants, race and city image in Global Guangzhou, in: Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 27,1, 55-79
Wilczak, Jessica
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/0117196818761425) - (2019), Dakar ville moderne: la médiation des entrepreneurs sénégalais en Chine, in: Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 53, 1, 89-107
Marfaing, Laurence
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2018.1548365) - Biometric identification technologies and the Ghanaian ‘data revolution’, Journal of Modern African Studies, Volume 58, Number 1
Thiel, Alena
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X19000600)
